Delivered at the 2010 Representative Assembly


Thank you, John Wilson. Thank you, all my friends in the NEA. Thanks to
all my new friends in Colorado and Massachusetts and California. Thank
you so much, California. The first time I spoke about my book was before
the NEA scholars group in October. But the first time I went public was
in San Jose, California. Thank you.

Let me first thank you so sincerely for this honor. I accept it with
humility, with gratitude, and with respect for the more than three
million educators that it represents.

Next, I would especially like to thank Camille Zombro of San Diego.
Without Camille and without her help and the help of teachers in San
Diego, I could not have written chapter 4 of the book. Read it and you
will see why.

Well, it's kind of amazing that this convention is being held in New
Orleans. I was, just a few minutes ago, interviewed by documentary
filmmakers who said to me, "Well, don't you know that New Orleans is
proving a new model?"  The new model consists of wiping out public
education and firing the unions, and it's spreading across the country.
And I said, "God forbid."  I pointed out to them what we all used to
know, which is that public education is the backbone of this democracy,
and we cannot turn it over to privateers.      

Since my book appeared in early March, I have started out on what I
thought would be a conventional book tour, but it really has turned into
a whistle-stop campaign. I have been to 40 different cities and
districts. I have another 40 planned starting in September. I talked to
union members, to school board members, to administrators, to left-wing
think tanks, to right-wing think tanks. I have met with high-level White
House staff. I have met with about 40 members of Congress. I would say
that I have met so far about 20,000 teachers, and after today I think I
am going to increase it to 30,000.

And in all of this time, aside from the right-wing think tanks, I
haven't seen met a single teacher who likes what's happening?  I haven't
met a single teacher who thinks that No Child Left Behind has been a
success. I haven't met a single teacher who thinks that Race to the Top
is a good idea.

Wherever I went, I met teachers who understood that there is a rising
tide of hostility to teachers, to the teaching profession, and to
teachers' unions. You see it almost daily in the national media, in
Newsweek magazine with its dreadful cover story about firing teachers,
and Time magazine with awful columns, and in the New York Times and the
Washington Post and all of the major media.

And as I talk to teachers, by the end of my talk, I hear the same
questions again and again: What can we do? How can we stop the attacks
on teachers and on the teaching profession? Why is the media demonizing
unions? Why does the media constantly criticize public schools? And why
does it lionize charter schools? Why is Arne Duncan campaigning with
Newt Gingrich? Why has the Obama Administration built its education
agenda on the punitive failed strategies of No Child Left Behind?


And teachers want to know, as you want to know, who will stand up for
public schools and their teachers? At every appearance that I've made,
teachers would come up to me afterward and they would say to me, "Stand
up for us. Speak for us. Be our voice wherever you go." And I promised
that I would, and I have.

I promised to speak out against No Child Left Behind. It's a disaster.
It has turned our schools into testing factories. Its requirement that
100 percent of students will be proficient by the year 2014 is totally
unrealistic. Any teacher could have told them that. Thousands and
thousands of schools have been stigmatized as failing schools because
they could not reach a goal that no state, no nation, and no district
has ever reached. By setting an impossible goal, No Child Left Behind
has delegitimized public education and created a rhetoric of failure and
paved the way for privatization.

I will continue to speak out against high-stakes testing. It undermines
education. High-stakes testing promotes cheating, gaming the system,
teaching to bad tests, narrowing the curriculum. High-stakes testing
means less time for the arts, less time for history or geography or
civics or foreign languages or science.      

We see schools across America dropping physical education. We see them
dropping music. We see them dropping their arts programs, their science
programs, all in pursuit of higher test scores. This is not good
education.

I have been told by some people in the Obama Administration that the way
to stop the narrowing of the curriculum is to test everything. In fact,
the chancellor in Washington, D.C., the other day announced she plans to
do exactly that. That means less time for instruction, more time for
testing, and a worse education for everyone.

In speaking out, I have consistently warned about the riskiness of
school choice. Its benefits are vastly overstated. It undercuts public
education by enabling charter schools to skim the best students in poor
communities. As our society pursues these policies, we will develop a
bifurcated system, one for the haves, another for the have-nots, and
politicians have the nerve to boast about such an outcome.

Public schools, as I said before, are a cornerstone of our democratic
society. If we chip away at support for them, we erode communal
responsibility for a vital public institution.

Teachers are rightly worried about the Race to the Top. I pledged to
keep asking again and again why a Race to the Top replaced equal
educational opportunity. Equal educational opportunity is the American
way. The race will have a few winners and a lot of losers. That's what a
race means.

Race to the Top encourages states to increase the number of privately
managed charters, to pass laws to evaluate teachers by test scores, to
promote merit pay, and to agree to close or privatize schools with low
scores or to fire all or part of their staff. All of this is wrong.

And thank you for passing a resolution expressing no confidence in Race
to the Top. Why expand the number of charters when research shows that
on average they don't get better results than regular public schools?
Last year, a major evaluation showed that one out of every six charters
will get better results, five out of six charters will get no different
results or worse results than the regular public schools. A report
released just a couple of weeks ago by Mathematica Policy Research once
again shows charter middle schools do not get better results than
regular public middle schools.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress, on whose board I served
for seven years, has tested charter schools since 2003. In 2003, 2005,
2007 and 2009, charter schools were compared to regular public schools
and have never shown an advantage over regular public schools. Charter
schools, contrary to Bill Gates, are not more innovative than regular
public schools. The business model and methods of charter schools is
this - longer school days, longer hours, longer weeks, and about 95
percent of charter schools are non-union.

Teachers are hired and fired at will. Teachers work 50, 60, 70 hours a
week. They are expected to burn out after two or three years when they
can be replaced. No pension worries, no high salaries. This is not a
template for American education.

If we pursue the path of privatization and deregulation, we better keep
in mind what happened with the stock market in 2008. And to those who
tout the benefits of vouchers and charters, I want you to point out this
example to them, of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Milwaukee has had charters and
vouchers now for almost 20 years. Twenty years with vouchers, almost 20
years with charters.

They have seen a steadily declining enrollment in the public schools,
and meanwhile research now shows that African-American students in
Milwaukee, the supposed beneficiary of all of this choice, have test
scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, test scores
that are below those of their African-American peers in Mississippi and
Louisiana.

There was no rising tide. Choice promoted no rising tide, and no boats
were lifted. While all of this money was invested in choice, there were
no benefits to the students.

The Race to the Top plan to use test scores to evaluate teachers is a
very bad idea, badly implemented. Legislatures should not decide how to
evaluate teachers.

SB6 was wrong in Florida. Thank you to the Florida Education Association
and to all the parents and friends who stood with you who defeated that
pernicious piece of legislation. And thanks to you for persuading
Governor Charlie Crist to do the right thing by vetoing it. Now you have
got to make sure that whoever is the next governor will veto it again if
it dares to come back again.

191 is wrong in Colorado. Sorry to say that it was passed. It was signed
into law, and the teachers may stand to be fired because the test scores
didn't go up consistently. And these are matters that are, in many
cases, beyond their control. Teachers should be judged by professional
standards and not by a political process. Research does not support
evaluating teachers by test scores.

Students are not randomly assigned to classes. Teachers' so-called
effectiveness fluctuates depending on which students happen to be in a
teacher's class. The single most reliable predictor of test scores is
poverty, and poverty, in turn, is correlated to student attendance, to
family support, and to the school's resources.

And perhaps we should begin demanding that school districts be held
accountable for providing the resources that schools need. Just like No
Child Left Behind, Race to the Top requires and pressures districts to
close low-performing schools. The overwhelming majority of
low-performing schools enroll students in poverty and students who don't
speak English and students who are homeless and transient. Very often,
these schools have heroic staffs who are working with society's neediest
children. These teachers deserve praise, not pink slips. Closing schools
weakens communities. It's not a good idea to weaken communities. No
school was ever improved by closing it.

You know, a lot of teachers don't pay attention to the national scene.
They are busy teaching kids. They don't pay attention to what's
happening in Washington. But when the Central Falls staff, the entire
staff, was fired without a single teacher having an evaluation, the
message went out that there is a new game of punishing teachers. And the
message also went out when this was endorsed by Secretary Duncan and
then reaffirmed by President Obama. This is not a good message.

We should thank our teachers, not fire them, not threaten them, and not
close their schools.

Merit pay is another of the useless fads of our time. Merit pay has
nothing to do with education. It destroys teamwork. It incentivizes
teachers to compete with each other for money instead of collaborating
for each other for the benefit of children.

Teachers need to share what they know and work towards one common goal -
helping children and young people grow and develop. Merit pay will
promote teaching to not very good tests. It may or may not improve
scores, but it definitely will not improve education.

I have spoken out repeatedly to defend the right of teachers to join
unions for their protection and the protection of the teaching
profession. Teachers have a right to a collective voice in the political
process. It's the American way. I don't see the Wall Street Journal or
the Washington Post or the pundits complaining about the charter school
lobby. I don't see them complaining about the investment bankers lobby,
or any other group that speaks on behalf of its members. Only teachers'
unions are demonized these days.

Currently, there is a campaign underway to eliminate tenure and
seniority. To remove job protections from senior teachers would destroy
the profession. Supervisors will save money by firing the most expensive
teachers. Imagine a hospital staffed by residents and interns with no
doctors. Bad idea.

Instead of the current wave of so-called reforms, we should ask
ourselves how to deliver on our belief that every student in this nation
should learn not only basic skills, but should have a curriculum that
includes the arts, history, geography, civics, foreign languages,
mathematics, science, physical education, and health. But instead of
this kind of rich curriculum, all they are getting is a heavy dose of
high-stakes testing and endless test preparation. And as the stakes
increase for teachers and schools, there will be more emphasis on test
prep and not what children need.

Policymakers have been far too silent about the role of the family.
Teachers know that education begins at home, and that when families take
responsibility, students are likely to arrive in school ready to learn.
We need, not a Race to the Top, but a commitment to provide greater
resources for those children who are in the greatest need. Schools and
school districts continue to vary dramatically in their access to
resources. The role of the federal government in education is to level
the playing field, not to set off a competition for money. Nor do we
expect the federal government to tell states and districts how to reform
themselves based on the Chicago experience.

Around the world, those nations that are successful recognize that the
best way to improve school is to improve the education profession. We
need expert teachers, not a steady influx of novices.

We need experienced principals who are themselves master teachers. We do
not need a wave of newcomers who took a course called "How to be a
principal." We need superintendents who are wise and experienced
educators, not lawyers and businessmen.

The current so-called reform movement is pushing bad ideas. No
high-performing nation in the world is privatizing its schools, closing
its schools, and inflicting high-stakes testing on every subject on its
children. The current reform movement wants to end tenure and seniority,
to weaken the teaching profession, to silence teachers' unions, to
privatize large sectors of public education. Don't let it happen!

So here's a thought for NEA. Print up four million bumper stickers that
say, "I am a public schoolteacher, and I vote - and so does my family."

Do not support any political figure who opposes public education. Stand
up to the attacks on public education. Don't give them half a loaf,
because they will be back the next day for another slice, and the day
after that for another slice.

Don't compromise. Stand up for teachers. Stand up public education, and
say "No mas, no mas." Thank you.